Unfulfilled Pledges Dog City Council Incumbents : Politics: But other vows made in 1987 campaigns have become source of pride for San Diego councilmen up for reelection.

As they look back at the campaign promises they made four years ago as challengers, the four San Diego City Council incumbents seeking reelection can do so with a combination of pride, frustration and, in some cases, sheepish hope that voters have short memories.

In areas ranging from such political staples as crime, environmental protection and jobs to thorny questions about new airport sites, sewage treatment and the city’s budget, the four--Ron Roberts, Wes Pratt, Bruce Henderson and Bob Filner--offered voters an exhaustive list of goals to be pursued, in the event they won.

Measured against their record--and the council’s--since their 1987 victories, that list can be viewed as a political report card on the incumbents’ success in translating campaign rhetoric into legislative accomplishment, at City Hall or in their respective districts, as they approach the Sept. 17 primary.

The comparison reveals a mixed record of success and progress, disappointment and inattention. While some campaign promises became guiding tenets during the council members’ four-year terms, others were seldom even mentioned after Election Day ’87.

Pratt, for example, has consistently championed job-creation opportunities in the economically depressed 4th District, but shelved another proposal for a Junior Government Institute aimed at educating youngsters about government and perhaps attracting them to public careers. Though he heavily promoted the latter idea in his campaign, “there were higher priorities” once he reached City Hall, Pratt explained.

Roberts, meanwhile, trumpets his success in helping to lower the noise from takeoffs and landings at Lindbergh Field--one of the major pledges he made to his 2nd District constituents, many of whom live beneath the airport’s flight path. But he has found another objective--development of a downtown sports arena--considerably more troublesome, with one private proposal having already failed and another still in the early talking stages.

In a few notable instances, the council members’ post-election performance diametrically contradicted the style and substance of their campaigns.

Henderson billed himself in the 1987 campaign as an environmentalist and “Your Neighborhood Protection Candidate”--only to later earn the Sierra Club’s “Golden Bulldozer” award for having, in that group’s eyes, the council’s worst environmental voting record.

Similarly, at 1987 candidate forums, Filner often urged his opponents to refrain from personal attacks, invoking what he termed “Filner’s Golden Rule: Thou shalt not engage in petty squabbling.” On the council, however, Filner’s abrasiveness has produced a contentious relationship with Mayor Maureen O’Connor and several of his colleagues, one of whom joked: “I guess Bob’s golden rule turned out to be brass, and pretty tarnished at that.”

Not surprisingly, the four incumbents argue that they have at least made progress toward most of their major campaign goals--a contention disputed by their challengers.

“I don’t think the city or the 8th District is better off today than it was four years ago,” said Filner challenger Andrea Skorepa, echoing comments made by the other challengers.

While it would be unreasonable to expect every campaign pledge to be achieved within a four-year term, Henderson believes other factors help explain the gap between the bright promises of 1987 and the political realities of 1991.

“I frankly thought some of these things would be an easier sell,” Henderson conceded. “That doesn’t mean you give up, but you move on to other priorities in the meantime.”

Other council members agree that their 10th-floor offices at City Hall provide a different perspective on what is politically possible than they had from the ground-level vantage point of the campaign.

“You get here and find out there’s a lot more to the job than just saying, ‘Here’s what I want to do,’ ” Pratt said.

That is precisely what the four said to voters, however, in 1987, beginning with the concerns that they identified as the major citywide issues then facing the council--growth and crime.

Though they pledged to bring both problems under control, their promises usually were couched in generalities often drawn from their political resumes, particularly on the volatile growth issue.

Pointing to his service on the city Planning Commission, Roberts told voters that the experience had given him a keen appreciation of the balance between environmental concerns and economic growth. In the same vein, Henderson, a former president of Citizens Coordinate for Century III, cited that fact as evidence of his “proven record of managing growth.”

Reminding voters of his tenure as a city school board member, Filner called for a “back to basics approach” to growth management. And Pratt stressed that while he would seek to attract major employers to the 4th District, where the unemployment rate among black youths approached 40%, he would make certain that new jobs did not come with a high environmental price tag.

Four years later, growth and development have slowed in San Diego. But environmental activists argue that has more to do with the nationwide economic downturn than with any growth management measures enacted by the council.

“Almost every major (growth control) proposal has been either voted down or watered down by the council,” said Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator.

Based on the Sierra Club’s 1990 rankings, Filner has the best environmental record of the four incumbents, having supported the group’s position on 84% of the 66 votes measured. Roberts received a 70% rating, Pratt drew a 66% ranking and Henderson tied Councilwoman Judy McCarty for the council’s worst record with a 59% rating.

Henderson, however, notes in his defense that a former Sierra Club official charged that the group’s leaders slanted the report to benefit former San Diego City Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt in her unsuccessful bid to survive a recall election last spring. He also argues that the rating was flawed because his votes against a $2.4-billion-plus secondary sewage plan were counted as anti-environmental votes, despite marine biologists’ claims that the program would do little if anything to improve ocean water quality.

“I consider myself an environmentalist, by any rational definition,” Henderson said. “Besides, the Sierra Club is not the only voice of the environmental community.”

However, another leading environmental group, Prevent Los Angelization Now!, or PLAN, gave Henderson an “F” in its most recent rating.

In the 1987 campaign, Roberts, Pratt, Henderson and Filner also focused on crime, pledging to increase the size of the police force to a ratio of two officers per every 1,000 residents.

Although the council has since increased the number of officers from 1,657 to 1,854, that ratio has edged up only from 1.59 to 1.65 officers per 1,000 residents because of San Diego’s population growth during the same period, according to Police Department statistics.

Citing budget constraints, most of the council members now describe the 2-per-1,000 goal as unreachable for the foreseeable future, adding that they have come to see it as an arbitrary target with no direct correlation to crime levels. Indeed, even as the police force grew over the past four years, so, too, did crime, rising from 88,227 reported incidents in 1987-88 to 101,564 last year, with violent crimes increasing 32% from 9,112 to 12,047.

The council members, however, point to the sizable police budget increases--as well as their decision to build San Diego’s first city-owned jail, a pre-arraignment facility scheduled to open next year--as proof that they have followed through on their 1987 anti-crime pledges.

In addition, Filner proposed a special tax to pay for extra officers; Pratt helped create a $28-million Neighborhood Pride and Protection Program aimed at curtailing gangs; and Henderson, adhering to a campaign pledge, played a key role in the Police Department’s acquisition of two helicopters.

Their opponents, however, view the spiraling crime statistics as a counterbalance to the incumbents’ self-congratulatory claims on the crime issue.

“It might not be fair to say they’re to blame for the problem getting worse,” said Pratt’s opponent, the Rev. George Stevens. “But it certainly is fair to say what they’re doing isn’t working.”

Each of the incumbents also offered a handful of other proposals that were, if not always unique to him, at least sufficiently distinctive to set him apart from the pack in 1987.

One such idea that attracted considerable attention--and drew praise from other candidates--was Roberts’ proposal that a new sports arena be built downtown to replace the existing one in the Midway area.

Though that idea remains just that--an idea far from becoming reality--Roberts has emerged as the council’s leading proponent of a downtown arena.

When La Jolla businessman Harry Cooper acquired the Sports Arena’s lease in 1989, hoping to build a new arena on his property in Sorrento Valley, Roberts played a key role in redirecting the search for a site to downtown’s eastern fringe.

Financial problems, combined with an inability to attract professional basketball or hockey franchises, ultimately scuttled Cooper’s dream of building an architecturally distinctive “Sports Palace.” But Roberts is optimistic that the man who acquired the arena lease from Cooper, Ron Hahn, the son of Horton Plaza developer Ernie Hahn, has the business savvy and political connections needed to build a downtown arena by the mid-1990s.

Roberts also has vigorously pursued his campaign pledge to make Lindbergh Field less noisy, consistently lobbying the San Diego Unified Port District, which oversees airport operations, to adopt standards requiring airlines to phase out older, noisier planes. As a result of those rules, about 75% of the jets now using Lindbergh are quieter so-called Stage III planes.

Last spring, Roberts also successfully pushed the council to limit development around the airport to prevent new construction from exacerbating existing safety and noise concerns.

Roberts’ most prominent role in San Diego’s lengthy debate over Lindbergh Field, however, involves his proposal for a “TwinPorts” international airport on Otay Mesa that would share runways and a control tower with Tijuana’s existing airport. If that plan succeeds, Lindbergh would remain open, operating primarily as a short-haul and commuter service airport.

Delivering on another campaign pledge, Roberts brokered a settlement in one of San Diego’s longest-running environmental battles, helping to put together a deal in which $3.5 million in city and state funds were used to acquire Famosa Slough.

“Overall, I feel very good about my record,” Roberts said. “Critics can say some of these things haven’t happened yet, but I don’t see them offering any better alternatives, and even they can’t deny we’ve moved forward in a lot of areas.”

In the 4th District, Pratt has had limited success in pursuing programs that he proposed in 1987 as a means of diverting troubled youths from gangs and crime.

Under his “Neighborhood Academies” proposal, volunteers at schools and churches were to conduct after-school programs ranging from remedial academic lessons to job-training classes. He also called for a Junior Government Institute, in which seminars with elected officials and field trips to City Hall were envisioned as inducements to public careers.

Though Pratt hoped to establish the academies in communities throughout the district, to date, only one--in Logan Heights--has been created. But he adds that the council-approved Neighborhood Pride and Protection program will accomplish many of the same goals.

After his election, Pratt dropped the Junior Government Institute plan, saying he judged it to be “a lower priority after I looked around at what needed to be done.” But Pratt has personally spoken at most of the schools in his district, visits that he contends have promoted youths’ understanding of local government.

Pratt also can point to a number of economic development initiatives, another major theme of his 1987 campaign. He helped create the Project Employment Program, a partnership between businesses and churches that has helped place more than 200 people in jobs, and organized another job-training program in which about 100 youths perform tasks such as clearing park trails, paint seniors’ houses and manage recycling projects.

Seeking to promote small business development, Pratt helped establish a revolving loan fund and “business incubator” program that makes loans of up to $25,000 available to individuals.

While Stevens dismisses Pratt’s efforts as “a failure that barely made a dent” in the 4th District’s economic woes, Pratt tells campaign audiences that the district’s “economic development is right on schedule.”

“I’ve arguably been the most effective council member in the past 3 1/2 years,” Pratt says. “And part of the reason for that is that I’ve tried to take a deliberate and reasonable approach, rather than spontaneous and rhetorical.”

To a much greater extent than the other candidates in 1987, Henderson regularly issued position papers on myriad district and citywide issues.

In a four-point “Homeowners Bill of Rights,” Henderson pledged to work to gain an extra police beat for the 6th District, to oppose the proposed multibillion-dollar secondary sewage plan that he argued could triple sewer charges, to protect single-family neighborhoods from multifamily development and to minimize canyon fire risks by increasing funding for the clearing of brush from city-owned land.

Though he did not obtain the extra patrol car--a disappointment partly offset by the two new police helicopters--Henderson did accomplish the three other goals, with his major success coming in a courtroom, not the council chamber, in the sewage case.

Convinced by local marine scientists that the secondary treatment plan demanded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was unnecessary, Henderson intervened in a federal lawsuit stemming from the decade-old dispute over the program, which ultimately could cost up to $10 billion.

Subsequently, U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster deferred approval of the sewage upgrade plan until 1993, giving the city more time to try to prove that some of its costliest components are not needed to protect the marine environment. Hailed by Henderson as “a home run for the city,” that ruling ultimately could save San Diego billions of dollars and is expected to accelerate the city’s water reclamation programs.

To protect single-family neighborhoods from an influx of apartments and condominiums, Henderson also won council approval of a plan reducing future density in Pacific Beach. Under the plan, property owners will be prohibited from building more than two dwellings on an average-sized lot, half the number formerly allowed.

Having often called Mission Bay “where the sewer meets the sea”--a reference to the more than 70 sewage spills between 1980-87--in his campaign, Henderson also can claim partial credit for the nearly $200 million that the city has since spent or committed to replace old pipes and relocate the Fiesta Island sludge facilities. Though there have been 58 spills since 1987, the improvements have minimized the spills’ seriousness.

One of Henderson’s more unusual ideas from the 1987 race called for prison labor to be used in local recycling programs, with inmates separating aluminum cans and other recyclable materials from San Diegans’ garbage. That has not occurred yet, but Henderson said that statewide voters’ approval of a 1990 ballot measure allowing prisoners to be paid by private companies gives him hope that his plan could yet prove workable.

Henderson has failed to deliver on campaign proposals to remove unsightly median dividers in Clairemont, to dramatically expand the use of staggered work hours and flextime to relieve peak-hour traffic congestion, and to establish a Pacific Rim theater that would be the focal point of an annual arts festival.

Eighth District Councilman Filner shares some of Henderson’s frustrations on the arts and staggered work hours, also having seen his 1987 ideas on those subjects wither.

Filner had proposed the creation of a municipal gallery that would showcase local artists’ work, but failed to pursue the idea when O’Connor adopted the arts--in particular, the 1989 Soviet Arts Festival--as one of her major concerns. “At that point, anything I did would have looked like I was interfering,” Filner explained.

Like Henderson, Filner also was a devotee of staggered work hours, saying in the campaign that he believed that rush-hour traffic could be reduced by as much as 45% within three years if the city offered financial incentives and other inducements to businesses to adopt such plans. Today, staggered work hours remain the exception rather than the rule, and Filner concedes that his 1987 estimates were “probably too optimistic.”

However, Filner has aggressively pursued campaign proposals aimed at strengthening the ties between City Hall and schools. He authored legislation creating “drug-free zones” near schools so that drug convictions would bring tougher penalties, and set up committees in individual communities to oversee the program. Along with other council members, Filner also pushed for the expansion of after-school recreation programs, and helped bring a Southwestern College campus to San Ysidro.

The South Bay portion of the 8th District, called “park-poor” by Filner in his 1987 race, now features new parks in most communities through his efforts.

In the campaign, Filner also pledged to try to resolve another issue of particular concern to the South Bay with citywide impact: the longstanding problem of spills from Tijuana’s antiquated sewage system flowing north toward San Diego beaches. After finally convincing his colleagues that the problem is a local, not federal, issue, Filner will soon witness the final chapter in what he regards as his chief accomplishment when Tijuana is hooked up to San Diego’s sewage system.

In recognition of the large number of Latinos living in his district, Filner promised campaign audiences in 1987 that he would learn to speak Spanish to facilitate communication with his constituents. Though he has taken Spanish lessons, Filner admits that he is not quite ready to urge 8th District residents to “ Votar por mi “ on Election Day, saying: “I know enough to get around, but not enough to give a speech.”

Like the other incumbents, however, Filner is at no loss for words in explaining why his performance has alternately followed or diverged from the path identified in the campaign of 1987.

“Priorities change, alliances on the council change, timing changes--and with those changes, the ability to get things done changes,” Filner said. “Things that looked very reasonable and possible when you’re not in office sometimes look different once you’re there. Anyway, the political process is not rational. Some things happen and others don’t happen, and you never can completely explain why.”